{"id":65,"date":"2001-10-26T16:15:51","date_gmt":"2001-10-26T21:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2001\/10\/26\/\/"},"modified":"2005-10-27T19:00:10","modified_gmt":"2005-10-27T23:00:10","slug":"florida-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2001\/10\/26\/florida-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ok, the long awaited trip post. <\/p>\n

It’s been so long now that I almost don’t feel like doing it, but I promised myself I would. So. [Edit: Grrr. I wrote a huge chunk and tried to post it and then it ate the damn post.]<\/p>\n

-Friday-
Friday was hectic. Went to work for the morning and then dashed off around 11:15 to get home and make sure Okina was ready to go and then GO. Driving to Logan was all right. I wouldn’t want to do it very often, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. We managed to find a parking place without a lot of trouble, even if it was on the roof, and then we went into the terminal. The line was really long, but I didn’t spend a lot of time standing in it, as I went around and got food and water and stuff for people. The Security line wasn’t too bad; went right through without so much as a beep. The flight wasn’t bad either, not too crowded. As we were turning east over the Cape, I saw this bunch of huge buildings below, and wondered to myself ‘who owns those?’ and then, lo, my question was answered by the giant KENNEDY painted on the ground next to them. ;^^. JFK was kind of cool, ’cause it had bouncy conveyor belts. On the plane, a little kid was sitting behind me and spent pretty much the entire flight kicking the back of my seat while his mother told him to stop it. This same kid, when his father managed to fall asleep, immediately began yelling “Dad! Dad! Wake up, dad!”<\/p>\n

Finally got to FL and had to locate the rental car bus. Got the car without letting the annoying salesman push any stupid insurance on us and then proceeded to the hotel. Dropped off the stuff and ran back off to IHOP, which was closing, but luckily served us anyway. The waiter was kind of loud and obnoxious, but I guess he was probably bored and wanted to leave [I would have!]. Then we went back to the hotel and slept and that was the end of Friday. Aside from the issues with the towels and the pillows, but I won’t get into that.<\/p>\n

-Saturday-
Saturday we went to Universal. We didn’t get there right when the park opened but it was still well before noon. The first ride we went on was Twister, which was kind of lame. After that, we went to guest services to try and get tickets for this special Halloween night they were having on Sunday, but unfortunately, the printer there was acting up and so after spending about a half hour standing around there, the guy decided he couldn’t fix it. We headed back towards the park entrance then (after going on Earthquake), because E, Okina and I had plans to eat lunch at Emeril’s restaurant.<\/p>\n

Emeril’s was very good. I had potato and truffle soup, beef filet with wild mushroom and potato salad, green beans, fizzy lemonade, and for dessert we had chocolate souffle, espresso tower cake, and some kind of berry cake. It was all really tasty. I managed to end up with some extra salad, because when my entree came out, it looked very messy on the plate and the waiter found this unacceptable.<\/p>\n

After lunch we went back into the park and went on a bunch more rides. We managed to get on pretty much everything without any trouble. MiB had a line, but it was still shorter than it could have been. The main problem with MiB was the fact that there were signs all around telling people to put their bags in these lockers they had nearby. The lockers were free for 45 minutes, but after that you had to pay to get your stuff out. Anyway, being the good little followers that we are, we put our stuff in the lockers and went in. Of course it took us longer than 45 minutes to get through, but we told an attendant we had locked our money in with our bags so couldn’t pay to get them out, and he unlocked them all for us. The first time we went through MiB (which was the only time for Saturday), I managed to win. We got the picture to commemorate this miraculous occurance. <\/p>\n

After the park was closing, we went back out into Citiwalk and went to the Italian place there for dinner. The waiter there was also really nice and let us have Italian sodas without paying extra — since they weren’t included on the tickets we’d gotten for this movie\/dinner deal. After dinner we went to the movies to see _Serendipity_. The theatre inexplicably had a large poster with anime characters on it.<\/p>\n

-Sunday-
Since Sunday was our first day to go to Islands of Adventure, we got up extra early and arrived at the park before it opened. When it finally did open, we immediately rushed to Spiderman so we could go on it without a line. The ride was pretty impressive, though I think it could have been made moreso — for instance, the part where you drop down into the net could be made longer. As it is now, it stops right when you finally start to feel like you’re falling. Once we were done with Spiderman, we tried to get through all of the water rides so we’d be able to dry off by the end of the day. By the time we got done with Bluto and Popeye’s bilge barge ride, we were absolutely soaked. It was warm, but not that warm, and so I was pretty miserable for a while. We went through to some more roller coasters, which were all pretty cool. The dueling dragon coaster was definitely the smoothest coaster I’ve ever been on. My head wasn’t banged around at all — it was very nice. I generally come away from those rides with a nasty headache.<\/p>\n

We’d wanted to eat lunch at the Green Eggs & Ham cafe, but it was closed, so instead we ended up at the Fantastic 4 cafe. After lunch we went on a few more rides, but we were all pretty tired, so we left the park and went back to the hotel for a while to nap before we came back for dinner and the Halloween night at Universal.<\/p>\n

We came back in time for our reservation at the Hard Rock cafe, but still ended up standing and waiting for a table. The person who seated us was kind of rude, but our waitress (we had really good luck with waiters this trip) was nice and gave us some free stuff because we complained. After dinner we went into Universal, which was dark and full of people who would chase you around with chainsaws. The first thing we did was make a beeline for Bill & Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure, which was the one show we all really wanted to see. We weren’t disappointed. The basic plot was that the (Universal) summer movie villains were trying to take over the world. The story ended up involving a large number of random characters, including Jay and Silent Bob (who were mistaken for Bill & Ted), Ace and Gary, the ambiguously gay duo, Harry Potter, and, of course, Bill & Ted. The guy playing Silent Bob really looked a \/lot\/ like Kevin Smith. <\/p>\n

After that we went on MiB 3 or 4 times in a row, trying to get better scores and a better picture. Okina won every time and my scores were pretty sucky. E got a picture, but we didn’t get another one. Then we went on T2:3D and the Hanna Barbera ride (which was kind of lame and bouncy). That meant we’d hit everything in Universal except Kongfrontation. There was still a little time left, so we headed back to one of the haunted houses and went through it. It was good, but not that great, and we didn’t stick around for another one. We got some stuff to drink on the way out and the security guards kept stopping Okina and E to see if it was alcoholic. <\/p>\n

-Monday-
We weren’t so fast to get to the park this day, but it didn’t matter. It was pretty empty anyway. E and I went on Dr Doom’s FearFall, which was supposed to be a freefall ride but turned out to be really lame. It shot you up very fast, which was exciting, but then it lowered you down really slowly. We went on the Dueling Dragons again to get a picture. We went through Poseidon’s Fury or whatever it was called, which was pretty stupid. It especially wasn’t worth the million years we had to spend in line to get in. We went on Spiderman a few more times, which was cool, though I have to say that the front row of the car was definitely better than sitting in the other spots. I like this ‘single rider’ policy that they have, which allows people to zip to the head of the line if they don’t care about sitting with all their friends. Unless there’s going to be a picture taken, I don’t really see that this is necessary, so it’s very convenient. Also the express tickets, which we made some use of on Monday. The problem, though, was that the lines were so short that almost all the time the tickets didn’t really gain us anything. <\/p>\n

We hadn’t planned to, but we ended up staying at IoA for almost the whole time it was open. We left and tried to find a Chinese buffet for dinner. We finally managed to find one, and it was pretty good. After that, we went back to the area near the hotel and went to the Pirate’s Cove adventure golf. This was kind of cool, ’cause it was the same minigolf that my family had gone to 15 years ago the first time we went to Florida. Okina won (of course), but I didn’t do too badly. I got quite a few holes in one.<\/p>\n

-Tuesday-
We left the hotel and headed down to the Olive Garden, since we had plenty of time to kill before we needed to be at the airport. Olive Garden was.. well, Olive Garden. I ate too much, even though all I got was the soup and salad lunch special. The waiter there didn’t like the way Okina’s Tour of Italy appeared on his plate (! What is up with these waiters?) so gave him some extra stuff. Then we went back to the area near the hotel and poked in the shops there. We went to FAO Schwartz and looked at the toys — they had all the HP legos which were cool, and even weirder, they had He-Man toys! He-Man! I almost got the Battle Damage Skeletor just because, but I have a feeling we may have one buried in the depths of the basement at home already. Instead I got a Padme beanie because it was 75% off and thus costed about $2. <\/p>\n

One thing FAO didn’t have, was the HP trading card game, but luckily the bookstore we went into next did have them. Yay. We went to the airport after that, and spent quite a while playing the game before we got on the plane. This time at the airport they went through my bag, but of course it was pretty empty. E was pissed because the guy at the counter was obnoxious and made her check one of her bags, even though one of them was -clearly- the size of a purse.<\/p>\n

The plane back was really crowded, but at least the flight was direct. My tray was broken. Finally we got to the airport and got our bags and went to get the car. The elevator was broken so we had to walk up the stairs with the bags to get to the car.<\/p>\n

Then we got home. The end.<\/p>\n

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Ok, the long awaited trip post. It’s been so long now that I almost don’t feel like doing it, but I promised myself I would. So. [Edit: Grrr. I wrote a huge chunk and tried to post it and then it ate the damn post.] -Friday-Friday was hectic. Went to work for the morning and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}